Community Convergence XII

Community Convergence XII

Welcome to the twelfth Community Convergence. Please go here to post comments. This edition of Community Convergence is dedicated to Robert Altman.

There is an IDE chat planned for Tuesday, November 28, at 1 PM Pacific time. Click here for help localizing the invitation for your time zone, and when the time comes, click to enter the chat room. Feel free to join us and ask questions about code snippets, enhanced IntelliSense, type colorization, refactoring, improved code navigation, metadata as source, edit and continue or any other IDE feature that interests you.

People interested in the IDE should view Karen Liu's new post, which contains a link to a colorful, easy to read PDF version of the Visual Studio 2005 key-bindings for C# developers.

Video on Automatic Properties

Be sure to view the two new videos that went up last Friday. These talks with Peter Hallam and Eric Lippert represent a chance to learn from two of the best minds on the C# development team.

In his video, Peter Hallam talks about a great new feature in Orcas called automatic properties. Peter was "present at the creation," and has seen C# through from the time it was just a gleam in Anders' eye to its present state. In an excellent section near the end of the video, Peter talks about using extension methods to enhance interfaces.

I'm also very excited about a video with C# wunderkind Eric Lippert. Eric gives an advanced talk about type inference in C#. It will be particularly interesting to LINQ developers. Eric is a natural teacher, and it is a joy to just sit back and bask in the flow of refined intelligence that emanates from him when he speaks.

Orcas LINQ Bits Coming Soon

The Orcas December CTP will contain new LINQ bits. The team has been churning out daily builds filled with new LINQ content. Over the next weeks it will all come together in a CTP that will be released to the public. This will be the first major update to the LINQ bits since the May CTP. The first Orcas beta is not due until 2007.

News

The big item in the news this week is that Borland has finally spun off its Developer Tools Division. The new company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Borland, is called CodeGear. Here is wishing them good luck and a long and prosperous life!